


heart swollen

by liquidsky



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidsky/pseuds/liquidsky
Summary: She'd never thought about it. They had shared beds, before, and clothes, food, toothbrushes. They had shared tangled impressions and ridiculous feelings, and she'd never thought about it. She would've known if Max had; it was why this seemed so—
Relationships: Max Evans/Isobel Evans
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	heart swollen

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, as soon as i saw them i knew this was coming at some point or another. set post-2x05, but fairly spoiler-less.

“Max,” Isobel warned, three steps back and open palms facing him, “I told you–”

It didn’t seem to matter, with Max stalking forward narrow-eyed and breathing heavily, face downturned but all the same just as Isobel remembered—curve of his nose, shape of his mouth, the awkward patch of hair on his jaw he somehow never quite got right, still there after all this time. She watched him hiss something through his teeth, her name first, then, “You shouldn’t have done this.”

She didn’t care enough. When he gripped both of her arms so tight he left finger-shaped bruises, she let him, peering at his face so close to hers. Warm air from his breath fanned her lips and she sighed, too, at the insistent brush of his conscience on the edge of hers, one heavy-hot strand pervasive like deep-set roots, pulling his thoughts from his fogged-up mind so clearly she could have voiced them herself. She’d missed it; whatever she’d gotten from him in the pod hadn’t been nearly as clear as this. “You’re looking for regret in the wrong place, Max.”

“I’m not,” he said, and shoved her back, following close. “It’s not what I’m looking for.”

Their knees knocked together when Max pushed even closer, dragged his lips to her forehead. He wasn’t that much taller than her, but he was built bigger, wider in a way that was made punishingly obvious as he planted his arms on each side of her head, caging Isobel in. She didn’t look up—kept her gaze forward until he moved again, thigh forcing hers apart to make room for himself. Touching all over, she found, trying to lift her hands up and realizing she couldn’t lest she end up pressing her palms up his sides. Max heaved out a punched-down breath when she eventually did, his own hands trailing down the side of her face, her arms. 

Isobel closed her eyes, saying, “What are you doing?” and waiting until Max’s hands had paused on her waist to breathe. “Max–” 

"I'm just–" he started, curling palms over her hips. Chests pressed together, thighs, arms, his face tipped forward to rest against hers. Not so much matched sets as they were puzzle pieces, sliding seamlessly together practiced and somehow brand new. Max blew a soft breath against her skin, and Isobel stood up on her tip-toes, but all it did was make him take one impossible step further into her space. 

They stood silent there, growing sweaty against each other despite the semi-cold air of Roswell autumn. There had been so much time, before, and Isobel was still as bitterly resentful as she'd been back then; that Max might've known he would be leaving her, and had done it anyway. He smelled the same then as he had growing up, wet soft grass on a rainy summer morning, exactly like her if not for just the slightest note of freshly-printed paper. When he tightened his hands, Isobel tipped her head back, and Max hid his face in the crook of her shoulder. They had never been as close as this, Isobel thought, but she'd felt it, before—time when he'd been this close to someone else, as much as he could spare of himself intertwined with someone who hadn't been her. 

It wasn't a hug, is the thing. They'd hugged before so many times she could have filled an entire journal accounting for the way she fit in his arms. He had his eyes closed, when he raised his head to touch his nose to hers, and he still looked half-furious, tumbling out of control. She felt it, too, a cacophony of her name inside her own brain, louder and louder until Max opened his eyes and it suddenly stopped, and he was kissing her. 

Isobel gripped his arms and moved back but there was only the wall, unyielding, and Max, equally so, inching forward into her, hard chest heavy on hers, hands suddenly curling under the back of her thighs to pull them up over his hips. The shared space where their thoughts met flooded, words and feelings spilling out the wrong way until she turned her face and Max was left to gasp against the curve of her jaw, shaking so hard it moved her as well. Maybe it'd been her all along—Max said her name twice, and if she had to guess she'd say her name was the word he'd reached for the most in their lifetime, and he'd always known so many of them. He had a word for what she felt now, she thought, even if it seemed like the sort of thing no words could possibly explain. 

She'd never thought about it. They had shared beds, before, and clothes, food, toothbrushes. They had shared tangled impressions and ridiculous feelings, and she'd never thought about it. She would've known if Max had; it was why this seemed so—"We shouldn't." 

It wasn't _we can't_ , and it wasn't _I won't_ , and Isobel couldn't tell whether Max caught that from her thoughts or her words, but he held her in place with the weight of his body and touched her face to turn her back to him, fingers dragging against her lips. It wasn't a wonder that Isobel would've done this for him. There wasn't much—there wasn't anything—she would have denied him, and Max, even empty Max, wouldn't have crossed the line unless he'd needed to. 

She kissed him back this time, gasped when he bit her lower lip into spurting blood. It tasted like them—something else that wasn't hers as much as it was theirs, and Max chased the metallic taste away with his tongue, licking into her. She'd felt it, before, what it was like for Max to kiss other people; a hazy-warm stream rushing into her at the most unremarkable of moments: sat in the kitchen with a glass of wine, reading a book in bed, grocery shopping. When she'd been fucking Noah, once, a swirling, syrupy stretch of a feeling she'd recognized right away. This felt different. It was warm, still, building up all the way down from her calves, a long, pooling heat sizzling where Max had used his grip for leverage to grind up against the inside of her thighs. 

"Max," Isobel said, digging her nails into his shoulders and hoping he'd stop. " _Max_." 

She wouldn't—it was either Max or it just _wasn't,_ and he didn't, so Isobel forced her eyes closed and licked into his mouth again, pulled him closer by the shoulders, other hand threading through his hair and tightening until he groaned soundly. She would've known his voice anywhere, and it sounded the same then, when he turned his face and muffled a groan into the shell of her ear. Some days, Max's voice was all she knew, and she fumbled with the collar of his sweater, noticed too late that his hands were catching the hem of her shirt and pulling up. Goosebumps on the exposed skin of her stomach, his hand pressing down over her sports-bra and down on her heart. With her shirt hiked up over her head, arms weirdly trapped by fabric, Isobel watched Max slow down his breathing, recognized this thing he'd liked to do when they were kids. He touched her until their breathing matched, and she didn't have to touch him to know his heartbeat was following hers. 

He dragged his fingers down her stomach, then, tender and soft, and Isobel bit her lips and groaned anyway; Max looked up at the sound, watched her face until tears started pooling in her eyes. "It's okay," he said, "Iz, it's alright." 

It wasn't—Isobel knew better than to believe this was the sort of thing they walked away from, but Max was _there_ , beating heart a twin to hers, warm breath on her face. Alive, with his fingers on the waistband of her leggings. She nodded, but instead of inching them down he trailed his hands down to palm her ass, pulling her cunt against the hard line of his dick, "Holy fuck, Max," Isobel breathed, barely standing on her feet as he pushed her legs down, "What–"

"Turn around?" He asked, voice soft again, everyday Max, looking at her same as always, _if I loved you any less_ , she thought, but she didn't. 

She turned around, bracing her forehead on her hands and feeling the scratch of brick on her palms. Her breathing sounded loud rattling off the wall, and Max pressed himself against her in a long, hot line, wrapping his arms around her tight, kissing the back of her neck. 

He asked "Can I?" and Isobel whispered yes, too quiet at first, then louder, a foot to the side so she could spread her legs, and Max pulled her leggings down, all the way down to her knees. 

The cold barely registered—she shivered at the metallic sound of his belt, wondering just what the fuck she was thinking letting her twin brother fuck her from behind against a dirty brick wall outside of an abandoned building. Max kissed the back of her neck again, ran his palms down her back, over her ass. He sighed so quietly she wouldn't have heard him if she hadn't looked over her shoulders to watch him, his gaze serious but untroubled. She watched him wrap a big hand around his cock, and she didn't know if—he looked up, met her gaze, and Isobel thought of all the ways Max was the only person in the world that was hers.

He stood perfectly still as she looked at him, terrified for a second until she wasn't—it was the one thing she could control, and when she nodded he moved close, skin on skin, and pushed in. It was odd, how she felt it twice, through herself, then through Max, and her body relaxed back against his as he pumped his hips, a thick, burning slide not unlike the blood-hot strand of his pleasure stretching into her thoughts. Isobel pushed back against him, saying his name until it stopped sounding like a word at all while Max's hands touched her everywhere; down her back, up her sides, her neck, face. Fingers gentle over the curve of her jaw, pausing over her heart. He set a slow, steady pace, pressed so close it felt he was crawling under her skin, shifting around to settle next to her bones. Twice-over, a loud loop of Max filling himself with her, pushing forward and forward until her whole front was plastered to cold brick.

He pushed her arms up, intertwined their fingers, brushed his lips to her ear, and Isobel could feel darkness seeping into her, too, but it didn't last; every deep shove home burned so bright she felt a fever, and darkness couldn't quite settle beside it at all. 

When Isobel tipped her head back onto his shoulder, Max kissed the side of her face. When she squeezed his fingers in hers, he said, "Isobel," first, then, "I wouldn't have—" and it wasn't more than a mumble, slick and too-quiet whispered into her skin, but she heard it regardless, straining back into him, the end of his sentence. What she had wanted to hear all along, and Isobel tipped forward to rest her forehead on the wall, breath pushing out of her loud and ridiculous. She felt him all over, bodies and thoughts tangled together, and when she came he followed easy, frame falling lax, glued to hers. 

It didn't fix it, Isobel could tell right away. But it helped, and she turned clumsily to cling to his shirt and kiss him again, deep and wet, bit his lips until he bled into her mouth, and he wrapped her arms around her and held on. 

They wouldn't come back from this, she thought, when he leaned away and swiped a finger over her lips, but they would be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> this is unbeta'd, so any and all mistakes are my own! feel free to point out if you found anything that really needs fixing. also! this might be _the_ most self-indulgent fic i've ever written, because holy fuck? there wasn't even a tag for them? what's up with that. it's a _cw_ show, come on!


End file.
